“You don’t know the half of it,” I said with a laugh. “I spent the last five years in Salt Lake City. The mountains were practically my back yard.”
“You ever lived in the Midwest before?”
I shook my head.
“Growing up where you did, you’ll probably be able to handle the winters here. I always feel bad for folks from the south who move up here and aren’t prepared to dig their cars out from under a few feet of snow six times every December.”
Brian poured a frothy liquid into an oversized mug and passed it across the counter to me. I took a cautious sip, and my eyes widened. Then they closed in bliss. It was milky and sweet, and the spices swirled in my mouth: ginger, cardamom, and cinnamon. The familiar, yet exotic, taste banished the last remnants of my lingering discomfort after meeting Penelope. I’d been worried that I’d mixed up reality with an episode of The Andy Griffith Show and romanticized what moving to a place such as this would be like, but maybe she was a singular villain in an otherwise friendly town.
“You’re right,” I told Brian, raising my mug in a toast. “This is awesome.”
He gave me a knowing smile. “Knew you’d like it. So what brings you to Donn’s Hill?”
I tensed slightly. He’d asked for the long version, but I wasn’t sure exactly how much detail he was really interested in getting from somebody he’d just met, or how much I was ready to share. Taking another sip, I mulled over my answer.
“My mom used to bring me here for the Afterlife Festival,” I said after swallowing. “I remember loving it here.”
He nodded, and I got the impression he recognized and accepted my reticence. He felt like the kind of sympathetic person that might work the day shift at a dive bar. Must be something about beverages. Coffee, booze—it’s all comfort food.
“I’m sure you’ll find it’s just the same as it was,” he said. “I own this shop. If there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.”
“Actually, maybe you can help me,” I said. “I’m looking for a room to rent.”
“Sure. Sometimes people post notices like that over there.” He pointed toward a large corkboard near the restrooms.
The paper-covered board was a cornucopia of announcements, business opportunities, and lost pet notices. Cradling the warm mug in my hand, I scanned the photos of missing animals, checking for the cat I’d encountered, but only saw a black lab and an orange tabby.
A light-blue sheet of paper proclaimed “Apartment for Rent” in comic sans. I shuddered. Even from my lowly position at the front desk of the agency, I’d learned to avoid that font. It was like the cardinal sin of the ad world.
According to the announcement, the apartment was a fully furnished one-bed, one-bath, converted attic that was available on a month-to-month lease. I almost dropped my mug; the monthly rent was half what I would have paid in Salt Lake City, and the utilities were included.
“Can I get this in a to-go cup?” I asked.
Chapter Four
According to the map app on my phone, the house was just off of town square. I polished off my chai and doughnut as I walked, enjoying their flavors while I took in my surroundings. Towering sycamores lined the sidewalk and shaded me from the noon sun. The houses I passed were mostly in the same Victorian style I’d seen up and down Main Street, with tall, narrow windows and an abundance of scrollwork and trimmed gables. They looked well cared-for, and I saw that many of the homes had been named. Carved wooden signs stood in front gardens, introducing the structures behind them with titles like the manor, blackberry lodge, and johnson’s roost.
Interspersed among the grand old houses were several new townhome developments, set sideways off the road. The pink stucco of the newer buildings looked pale and sickly compared to the bold colors of the clapboard siding on the older homes. Please let the apartment be in one of those old beauties, I pleaded with the universe at large.
I found the address and saw that I was in luck. It was a three-story bright-yellow behemoth with wraparound porches on both the first and second floors. A small wooden sign hung from the opening above the porch steps: primrose house. I looked up at the third floor and squealed. It had a peaked turret, like a little wizard’s tower.
The bushes beside the front gate rustled and the little dark cat from the town’s sign and the coffee shop stepped out into the sun. One of its sides was covered in dirt and bits of grass. It blinked its sleepy eyes and trilled. “Brrrlllll.”
I bent over and petted away some of the debris. “What are you doing here, huh? Are you following me?”
The cat blinked at me in response. I wasn’t sure if it was a yes, a no, or “Stupid human, like I care where you go.”
I gave it a few more strokes. Once I had brushed off the dirt, the cat’s fur felt silky and soft beneath my hand. Its coat gleamed in the bright sunlight, and the cat wove between my legs as it purred.
“I’m not even going to bother trying to pick you up, little guy.” I straightened up and dusted my hands off on my pants. “Guess I’ll see you around.”
The cat lifted its nose into the air, and its whiskers flexed as it sniffed the tall tufts of grass that poked out from the spaces in the wrought-iron fence around the house. It leaned forward and munched on the lawn, smacking loudly.
Leaving the cat to its repast, I walked up to the house and rang the antique doorbell. Fingers crossed at my sides and the balls of my feet bouncing, I silently begged for the apartment to still be available. I’d always wanted to live in a gorgeous old house like this, one with character and history. Living in a little turret like a fairy-tale princess would be an added bonus.
A man in his early thirties opened the door. He had short dark-brown hair, large glasses with thick black frames, and wore a set of spattered coveralls.
“Can I help you?” he asked, giving my backpack a wary glance.
“Hi. I saw a flyer about an attic apartment for rent here.” I gave him my best I’m-not-a-serial-killer smile.
His face relaxed. “Oh, yeah. It’s still available. Come on in. I’ll show it to you.”
He stepped back from the door, letting me into the foyer. The smell of old mahogany filled my nostrils, and I breathed it in deeply. It made me imagine I’d gone back in time a few hundred years.
The guy’s heavy eyebrows rose above the frames of his glasses. “Does it smell okay in here?”
“What?” My cheeks reddened. “Oh, yeah, better than okay. I love that scent.”
He grinned, revealing deep dimples in his cheeks. “You and me both. I’m Graham, by the way.”
“Mac.”
A narrow staircase led up to the second and third floors, bending with the walls in a square spiral. As Graham and I passed the second-floor landing, I noticed numbers on several doors.
“Has the whole house been converted into apartments?” I asked.
“Yep. Eight units in all.”
We reached the third-floor landing, where two doors marked with gold numbers stood facing each other. I’d gotten turned around a bit from going up several flights of stairs, but I was pretty sure number seven was on the west side and number eight was the side with the turret. I crossed my fingers again and chanted in my head, Turret, turret. Come on, turret!
Graham unlocked number eight, and I allowed myself a quick victory pump with one arm while his back was turned before following him inside.
The apartment was more like a studio than a one-bedroom. It was a large, square room that opened up into the round turret in one corner. My stomach sank as I took in the hodgepodge of furniture. Nothing seemed to go with anything else. I’m all for eclectic decorating, but everything here looked randomly selected, probably after being cast off from other parts of the house. An ornately carved wardrobe stood against one wall, with a mismatched antique brass bed next to it. The faded gray stripes and pronounced sag of the mattress seemed to warn, “You’re going to need a chiropractor in the morning.”
The turret helped buoy my f
eelings a bit. Two short rows of bookshelves curved along the rounded wall, covered by a wide window seat. The plush cushion of the seat looked more comfortable than the sagging bed, and the shelves were filled with old paperbacks. Warm sunlight spilled into the room through tall windows above the seat.
A kitchenette took up the corner opposite the turret. A few tan cupboards hung over a tiny sink and a hotplate. A miniature green fridge that was definitely older than me stood to one side. There was no oven.
I looked at Graham, the pit in my stomach growing again. “This is the kitchen?”
He nodded. “If you need more fridge space or an oven, there’s a fully equipped kitchen on the main floor that all tenants share.”
Relief filled me for a moment. I was no chef, but the idea of warming up cans of soup on the little hotplate every night was too dismal to bear. Then a new wave of apprehension hit. If the kitchen is shared…
“There’s a private bath, though, right?” I wanted an apartment, not a room in a boarding house.
“Yeah, it’s through there.” He indicated a narrow wooden door next to the kitchenette that I’d assumed was a closet.
A happy sigh escaped my lungs as I stepped into the bathroom, taking in the deep claw-foot tub and the narrow stained-glass window. It seemed like the kind of place where I could actually unwind.
Stepping back into the apartment, I eyed it again and tried to imagine myself living here. I now understood why the rent was so cheap; no way could they charge much more than what they were asking. But even though it was small and didn’t have a full kitchen, it had an undeniable charm and felt strangely comfortable.
Josh had preferred modern apartments in large complexes—boring white walls, the same square patios, and never enough natural light. He would’ve hated this place. The thought made me like it just a little bit more.
“I’ll take it,” I told Graham.
“Just so you know, pet rent is extra.”
“Pet rent?”
“For the cat,” he said, nodding toward my feet.
I looked down. The cat from outside sat next to me, gazing around the room as though it was also here to check out the apartment. It looked up at me, then slowly closed one yellow eye and opened it again.
Chapter Five
“So it’s not your cat?” Graham asked, raising one thick eyebrow. He tapped his pen on the table like a metronome.
We were sitting at the large oak table in the shared kitchen on the main floor, going over the finer points of the lease. He’d just gotten to the part about rent being fifty dollars more a month for each animal in the apartment, and I’d asked if I could hold off on signing that section until I made sure the cat didn’t already have an owner.
“I don’t know,” I told him.
“How can you not know if it’s your cat?”
“I guess I should say I don’t know yet.” I shifted uncomfortably in the hard wooden chair. The cat, who’d already made itself at home on my lap, paused in cleaning its paws to glare up at me. I wasn’t sure if it was angry that I was moving around or that I wasn’t committed to our relationship.
The cat felt like the overly attached boyfriend you didn’t even know you had. I was baffled by how quickly it had gone from running away from me every time I got too close, to making it abundantly clear it wanted to move in with me. I kept warning myself not to get too attached, but the cat was making that very difficult. I’d fallen in love exactly 2.2 seconds after it jumped onto my lap, before it even finished turning around to lie down.
Graham kept tapping his pen. “Here’s what I can do. My dad wants the room rented as soon as possible, but I’ll hold it for you for the rest of the day. Figure it out and come back before eight tonight if you want it, and then we’ll sign the papers.”
He gave me directions to the town’s veterinarian, which was only a few blocks away. I didn’t have an animal carrier, and I figured the cat wouldn’t want to get stuffed into my backpack, so I picked it up and hoped I’d be able to hang on to it for the short walk. It didn’t seem to mind being held; in fact, it allowed me to cradle it like a baby. However, as soon as we were clear of the front porch, the cat wiggled out of my arms and dropped to the ground. I yelped, expecting it to dash off into the bushes and disappear forever, but it just stared up at me. Its round eyes seemed happy, and I felt as though it was asking, “So where are we off to?”
I took a few tentative steps down the sidewalk. The cat followed beside me, winding between my legs when I stopped walking. I took another few steps, and it followed me again, stopping when I did. It stretched its front legs up my jeans and dug its claws into my kneecap.
I yelped. “Okay, I get it! Let’s go for a walk.”
The cat stayed with me all the way down the street. I felt a little absurd as several cars and pedestrians passed me, sure they were thinking I was some lunatic taking her cat for a walk. The cat didn’t appear to feel any such insecurity as it trotted next to me, purring happily.
When we reached Donn’s Hill Animal Hospital, I scooped the cat up into my arms in case it tried to bolt as soon as it discovered where we were. The clinic was in a large, newer building off Main. The sign advertised grooming and boarding in addition to the standard veterinary services and even provided equine care in a large red barn that loomed behind the main clinic.
The cat didn’t struggle at all as I pulled the door open and entered the building. Instead, it burrowed its head under my chin, purring vigorously. The harsh smell of disinfectant perfumed the air inside the clinic, almost managing to cover the underlying odors of urine and wet dog.
“Smart move, hiding your nose,” I muttered to the cat as we waited to be seen.
The veterinarian, Dr. Lee, was an athletic-looking woman with dishwater-blond hair and gleaming white teeth. Deep lines appeared around her mouth and eyes when she smiled, which was often. She let me know right away that the cat, whom I’d been calling “he,” was actually a girl.
“This color pattern is called tortoiseshell. It’s a color mutation that’s similar to a calico, and they’re almost always females,” she explained. She pulled her stethoscope out of her ears and slung it around her neck. “I can tell for sure from glancing between her legs, though. Judging from her teeth, I’d say she’s about ten years old.”
“Tortoiseshell,” I repeated, studying the cat’s fur.
“Have you ever owned a cat before?”
“No,” I admitted. I’d always wanted one, but both my parents had been allergic and Josh claimed pets were too messy.
“Congratulations on taking the plunge!” Dr. Lee picked the cat up with one arm and her clipboard with the other. “I’m just going to take her into the lab to draw some blood and scan for a microchip.”
They were gone a long time, and I fought to stay awake in the hard plastic chair in the exam room. The day had already been exhausting, and I hadn’t slept well the night before—or many nights before that.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
I startled awake in my chair and checked my chin. No drool. I blinked and nodded, trying to look as though I hadn’t been sleeping.
“Uh, no problem.” I cleared my throat. “What did you find?”
“We found a microchip.” She sat the cat down on the exam table.
My heart sank. This is why I told you not to get attached! Well, that decides it. You obviously need a cat in your life. We’ll get this kitty back to its owner today then go adopt a cat from a shelter tomorrow.
“How can I get her back to her home?” I asked.
“That’s what was taking me so long. I found the owner in the registry, and we were trying to get a hold of her, but her phone was disconnected. My tech was searching the Internet for any other contact information for her, and she found an obituary. It seems little Striker here belonged to an elderly widow in Moyard who passed away six months ago.”
My eyebrows drew together. Moyard was the closest city to Donn’s Hill, but it was still more than si
xty miles away. It seemed like a long walk for a cat; no wonder she was so skinny.
“Do animals pass on to next of kin?” I had no idea how all of that worked. Surely a cat wasn’t like a house or a car—another asset for someone to inherit.
“They’re often bequeathed in a will. But there’s been no change to Striker’s microchip records and she hasn’t been reported missing to Moyard Animal Control. This kitty is a free agent, in a manner of speaking.”
My heart lifted. “Does that mean I can adopt her?”
Striker jumped down off the table and leapt onto my lap. She jutted out her chin, which I took as an instruction to scratch her jaw.
Dr. Lee laughed. “I see she’s already getting you trained. Sometimes I don’t know who’s adopting whom. Yes, she’s all yours.”
The clinic staff helped me update Striker’s owner information in the microchip registry, officially making us a family. They also sent me home with a “cat care” kit that had food samples, a new collar and tags, and a small disposable litter box. I felt foolish for being worried about looking absurd on the way to the vet. That was nothing compared to the way I looked on the way back to Primrose House, loaded down with pet supplies while a little cat pranced beside me.
I was grinning as I returned to the yellow Victorian and knocked on the door. “We’ll take it,” I told Graham when he answered.
“Brrrlllll,” Striker added for good measure.
Chapter Six
I was sitting at a weathered café table on a concrete patio. The table’s spindly form had once been painted candy-apple red, but everything except the bolts had long since faded to a pinkish brown. I surveyed the yard around me, which nearly glowed in the early-morning light. In the back corner, a swing set sat rusting, its chains creaking in the breeze. Something about the abundance of lavender and hummingbird feeders felt so familiar.
This is my mother’s backyard, I realized.
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